The rustic authorities on "mushrooms"
The too prevalent mortality traceable to the mushroom is confined to two classes of unfortunates: 1. Those who have not learned that there is such a thing as a fatal mushroom; 2. The provincial authority who Can "tell a mushroom" by a number of his so-called infallible "tests" or "proofs." There is a large third class to whose conservative caution is to be referred the prevalent arbitrary distinction between "toadstool" and "mushroom," ardent disciples of old Tertullian, who believed in regard to toadstools that "For every different hue they display there is a pain to correspond to it, and just so many modes of death as there are distinct species," and whose obstinate dogma, "There is only one mushroom, all the rest are toadstools," has doubtless spared them an occasional untimely grave, for few of this class, from their very conservatism, ever fall victims to the "toadstool."
And what a self-complacent, patronizing, solicitous character this rustic mushroom oracle is! Go where you will in the rural districts and you are sure of him, or perhaps her—usually a conspicuous figure in the neighborhood, the village blacksmith, perhaps, or the simpler "Old Aunt Huldy." Their father and "granther" before them "knew how to tell a mushroom," and this enviable knowledge has been their particular inheritance.
How well we more special students of the fungus know him! and how he wins our tender regard with his keen solicitude for our well-being! We meet him everywhere in our travels, and always with the same old story! We emerge from the wood, perhaps, with our basket brimful of our particular fungus tidbits, topped off with specimens of red Russula and Boletus, and chance to pass him on the road or in the meadow. He scans the basket curiously as he passes us. He has perhaps heard rumors afloat that "there's a city chap in town who is tempting Providence with his foolin' with tudstools;" and with genuine solicitude and superior condescension and awe, all betrayed in his countenance, he must needs pause in his walk to relieve his mind in our behalf. I recall one characteristic episode, of which the above is the prelude.
"Ye ain't a-goin' to eat them, air ye?" he asks, anxiously, by way of introduction.
Rustic discrimination
"I am, most certainly," I respond; "that is, if I can get my good farmer's wife to cook them without coming them and inundating them in lemon-juice."
"Waal, then, I'll say good-bye to ye," he responds, with emphasis. "Why, don't ye know them's tudstools, 'n' they'll kill ye as sartin as pizen? I wonder they ain't fetched ye afore this. You never larned tew tell mushrooms. My father et 'em all his life, and so hev I, 'n' I know 'em. Come up into my garden yender 'n' I'll show ye haow to tell the reel mushroom. There's a lot of 'em thar in the hot-bed naow. Come along. I'll give ye a mess on 'em if ye'll only throw them pizen things away."
"And how do you know that those in your garden are real mushrooms?" I inquire.
"Why, they ain't anything like them o' yourn. They're pink and black underneath, and peel up from the edge."
"How many kinds of mushrooms are there, do you suppose?" I ask.
"They's only the one kind; all the others is tudstools and pizen. It's easy to tell the reel mushroom. Come up and I'll show ye. Don't eat them things, I beg on ye! I vaow they'll kill ye!"
At this point he catches a glimpse of a Shaggy-mane mushroom, which comes to light as I tenderly fondle the specimens, and which is evidently recognized as an acquaintance.
"What!" he exclaims, in pale alarm. "Ye ain't goin' t' eat them too?"
"Oh yes I am, this very evening," I respond. "I think I'll try them first."
A rustic authority
"Why, man, yure crazy! You don't know nothin' about 'em. I'd as soon think o' eatin' pizen outright. Them's what we call black-slime tudstools. They come up out o' manure. I've seen my muck-heap in my barnyard covered with the nasty things time 'n' ag'in. They look nice 'n' white naow, but they rot into the onsiteliest black mess ye ever see. I know wut I'm sayin'. Ye can't tell me nothin' 'baout them tudstools! They keep comin' up along my barn-fence all thro' the fall—bushels of 'em."
"Well, my good friend, it's a great pity, then, that you have not learned something about toadstools as well as mushrooms, for you might have saved many a butcher's bill, and may in the future if you will only take my word that this much-abused specimen is as truly a mushroom as your pink-gilled peeler, and to my mind far more delicious."
"What! Do you mean to tell me thet you have reely eaten 'em?"
"Yes, indeed; often. Why, just look at its clean, shaggy cap, its creamy white or pink gills underneath; take a sniff of its pleasant aroma; and here! just taste a little piece—it's as sweet as a nut!" I conclude, offering him the white morsel.
"Not much! I'll make my will first, thank'ee! You let me see ye eat a mess of 'em, and if the coroner don't get ye, p'r'aps I'll try on't."
"Toadstool" prejudice
Experiences similar to this one are frequent in the career of every mycophagist, and serve to illustrate the pity and solicitude which he awakens among his fellow-mortals, as well as to emphasize the prevalent superstitions regarding the comparative virtues of the mushroom and toadstool—a prejudice which, by-the-way, in the absence of available popular literature on the subject, and the actual dangers which encompass their popular distinction, is a most beneficent public safeguard.
Popular tests and superstitions
The mushroom which "he can tell" is generally the Agaricus campestris, or one of its several varieties; and knowing this alone, and tempted by no other, this sort of village oracle escapes the fate which often awaits another class, who are not thus conservative, and who extend their definition of mushroom (a word supposed to be synonymous with "edible"), and this mainly through the indorsement of certain so-called infallible tests handed down to them from their forefathers, and by which the esculent varieties may be distinguished from the poisonous. By these so-called "tests" or "proofs" the identification of certain species is gradually acquired. The rural fungus epicure now "knows them by sight," or perhaps has received his information second-hand, and makes his selection without hesitation, with what success may be judged from the incident in my own experience already noted—one which, knowing as I did the frequency and confidence with which my country friend sampled the fungi at his table, filled me with consternation and anxiety for his future.
"How, then, shall we distinguish a mushroom from a toadstool?"
There is no way of distinguishing them, for they are the same.
"How, then, shall we know a poisonous toadstool from a harmless one?" the reader hopelessly exclaims.
This discrimination is by no means as difficult as is popularly supposed, but in the first place, the student must entirely rid himself of all preconceived notions and traditions, such as the following almost world-wide "tests," many of which are easily demonstrated to be worse than worthless, and have doubtless frequently led to an untimely funeral. Some of these are merely local, and in widely separated districts are supplanted by others equally arbitrary and absurd, while many of them are as old as history.
WORTHLESS TRADITIONAL TESTS FOR THE
DISCRIMINATION OF POISONOUS AND EDIBLE MUSHROOMS
FAVORABLE SIGNS
1. Pleasant taste and odor.
2. Peeling of the skin of the cap from rim to centre.
3. Pink gills, turning brown in older specimens.
4. The stem easily pulled out of the cap and inserted in it like a parasol handle.
5. Solid stems.
6. Must be gathered in the morning.
7. "Any fungus having a pleasant taste and odor, being found similarly agreeable after being plainly